In this issue
Here and now
News feature: Through the gate (free article)
Counselling women offenders on short-term sentences
Letters
The big issues
Back onside
Gary Bloom applies his sports-journalism skills in the classroom
Chronic pain: a neurosomatic approach
Judith Maizels and Fiona Adamson attend to the emotional core of chronic pain
Culture and context
Rose Cameron argues that context is all-important when working with diversity
Escaping the drama triangle
Mark Head explores the games clients play and how to defuse them
Regulars
This much I don’t know
Life-changing learning
Cautionary tales
Susan Dale launches our regular feature unpacking ethical problems in everyday counselling practice
Research into practice
Clare Symons encourages more communication between researchers and practitioners
Dilemmas
Readers wrestle with this month’s testing scenario
Talking point
What’s on your clients’ minds?
Self-care
You tell us how you unwind
Analyse me
What does your counselling room say about you?
Your association
A pdf version of this issue is available from the Therapy Today archive
Editor’s note
Welcome to the first issue of our redesigned, relaunched Therapy Today. And a warm welcome, too, to Rachel Shattock Dawson, who has joined the team as consultant editor. Rachel is an experienced women’s magazine journalist and editor, and now a full-time practising psychotherapist. Her knowledge of magazine publishing and her views from the front line of clinical practice have helped shape the new journal, and will continue to do so.
Therapy Today last had a redesign in 2009. That design was a classic, admired and imitated widely. But, when BACP asked Think to take on the publication of the journal, it was a perfect opportunity to refresh it.
I see Therapy Today as the beating heart of the counselling professions – its purpose is to feed your thinking and practice with the oxygen of high-quality articles on clinical and professional issues in whatever sphere you work.
Our aim with the refresh has been to build on all that was good and highly valued about the journal – its depth and breadth of professional content, its invitations to readers to engage with the subject matter and with each other, and its balance of practice, research, politics and debate. We have sought to lighten and brighten it a bit, by introducing more illustration and offering some shorter, more accessible sections and articles that you can dip into and to which, we hope, you will contribute.
Email me your thoughts; we really do want to know what works for you and what doesn’t. This is a process, not the end goal.
Catherine Jackson
Editor
If there’s a theme this issue, it’s change. As therapists, promoting and enabling change is central to what we do. It can take time, but counselling can and does change lives for the better, and this is what makes our work so fulfilling.
Last summer, a group of us gathered round a big table to talk about changing Therapy Today. How could it be improved? What needed refreshing? Was every page earning its keep? Was there a good balance between theory and practice, and was there something for everyone, from student to practitioner to manager to professor?
Many months later and a renewed and reinvigorated Therapy Today is born. As a former editor turned therapist, I’m proud that Therapy Today has always stood out as a class act among its peers. We hope that you now find it more useful, engaging and thought-provoking. Of course, we’d love to hear what you think, good and bad. We’ll be listening.
Rachel Shattock Dawson
Consultant editor